California University to stage mock funeral to protest state budget
Students and faculty at California University of Pennsylvania will stage a funeral to mourn the death of public higher education with a funeral procession featuring a coffin and music, beginning at 11 a.m on Tuesday.
The event will begin and end in front of Natali Student Center and will include a procession through campus.
According to university officials, the coffin is meant to symbolize the inevitable death of public higher education in Pennsylvania if Governor Tom Corbett’s proposed education budget is passed. Student and faculty speakers will offer eulogies following the processional.
All those who are friends of the potentially deceased public higher education are welcome to attend. Black clothing is preferred, but not required. Those bearing small memorial gifts such as hope, a future, a hand up, a way out, among other gifts, will be allowed to throw them into the casket.
“OK, this whole funeral thing might seem a bit crazy,” said Dr. Rick Cumings, a professor in the Department of Communication Studies, “but we need people to wake up to what is happening. The vast majority of students who attend our Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) universities come from middle to lower class families and it is they who will suffer the most.”
“It is the over 117,000 students in the 14 PASSHE universities who will stay in Pennsylvania, get jobs, and determine the future of Pennsylvania who are being shut out and shut down,” Cumings said. “It is their future and their hopes they see dying a horribly unnecessary death.”
The event is being organized by the California University chapter of the statewide professors union. It is being held in conjunction with all of the 14 PASSHE universities’ professor union chapters across Pennsylvania who have designated March 26 to 30 as an action week.
Cumings said the various events are meants to sound the alarm for citizens of Pennsylvania to become educated about the issue and to encourage their legislators to change the governor’s proposed budget in favor of public higher education.